The Desert Lion's True Colours (27 page)

As they walked through the room’s reception area, Leon took a quick inventory of the suite’s dimensions. Apart from the guy in the nice pants and the two guys who had brought them, the suite seemed to be empty. Pointing to the beige leather couch at the far end of the living room, the guy said ‘Go sit over there.’

Without hesitation both Leon and Jay did as they were told and sat on either end of the three seat couch. The same guy who ordered them to sit down took a mobile phone out of his pocket and hastily dialled a number. The line was picked up and for the next three minutes he was engaged in a heated conversation with someone who obviously held a different opinion. The call ended and the guy looked over at Leon and Jay with anger in his eyes.

‘You say there is something wrong with the package?’

They both kept silent.

‘You refuse to talk to me?’ shouted the guy on the phone.

No reply was given.

The new guy smiled, placed the phone back into his pocket, his gun back into the holster his waist and simply said ‘Ok. Suit yourself.’ He then paused, turned to the other two men and said something neither Jay nor Leon could understand.

However the driver replied in English, ‘Why? Where are you going?’

Frowning, the guy with the nice clothes walked over to the driver, grabbed the back of his neck to bring him closer then whispered into his ear. It was not possible to hear what was being said but Leon could see the driver’s facial expression changed from defiance to reluctant acceptance. The new guy in charge then walked over to the driver’s partner, tapped him on the shoulder and left the suite.

As soon as he was gone Jay blurted out ‘Yo, where’s your man going? Something wrong?’

Neither of the men replied to that however the one left in charge approached Leon and in a low voice said, ‘In about ten minutes the package would have reached its destination. Are you sure there is nothing you want to say before it is checked?’

‘Not to you.’ Leon said daringly.

The guy chuckled. ‘Why do you Americans always try to play the tuff guy? You always want to be the cowboy, the gangster.’ He paused to tell his partner to come in closer and then turning his attention back to Leon said ‘. . . This is not the Wild West. And you are not John Wayne.’

Both Jay and Leon started to laugh.

“
This
is
not
the
Wild
West
and
you
are
not
John
Wayne.”
They repeated mockingly.

‘Yo. You guys are a joke.’ Jay said smiling.

‘Really… ? Well in
eight
minutes
we will see who will be laughing.’

The guy looked down at his watch, smiled and was about to say something else but his phone started to ring. He answered; ‘Yes…’

The person on the other end was speaking very loud, almost shouting. However, midway through their rant, the call dropped. The guy who was standing in front of Leon lowered the phone from his ear, turned to his partner and said ‘Stay here and watch them while I go find Jafar.’

His partner, who Leon was now a 100% sure was at the bottom of the totem-pole, nervously nodded his head. He then took another gun from around the back of his waist and stood up directly in between Leon and Jay, about 5ft away. He held his arms out at full length with his weapons cocked, aimed and ready to fire. The two, Sig Sauer P22’s hung in the air poised and steady. No tremors, no flinches.

‘He
might
have
been
at
the
bottom
of
the
pile
but
he
was
still
good
at
handling
a
gun
.’

Smiling, Jay said ‘Damn! They left you all by yourself?’

The guy didn’t answer just raised his right arm, causing his aim to move up from Jay’s chest to the space between his eyes. Jay was pushing their luck. So after telling him to be quiet, Leon slowly raised his hands above head and said, ‘Look man, we don’t want any trouble. I get it. You’re just following orders, doing what your brother told you.’

He paused and watched the gun in the guy’s left hand start to twitch. Leon new he had touched a nerve, so he continued, ‘The guy that just left is your brother right?’

A few seconds passed before the guy finally nodded his head in reply. So Leon continued, ‘See I thought so. When we were in the Range, I sat there and thought to myself, Self,
-
why would you allow someone to talk to you like that?’

Both of the guy’s hands started to twitch, followed by him ordering them to shut up.

‘If you say another word I’ll kill you.’ He said.

‘No you won’t…’ Leon replied. ‘You got another five minutes before you can do anything and besides, your big brother told you to watch us. Nothing else.’

Jay chuckled. ‘They taking the piss outa you dawg.’ He said. ‘Your boy Jafar dips out, then your brother leaves you. Yo! That ain’t cool man.’

‘Shut up… !’ He interjected. ‘. . . I mean it. I’ll kill you both, right now.’

‘Really?’ Leon responded.

‘Yes. Really.’ replied the young man.

‘Well do it!’ Jay shouted.

The guy was going to reply but paused when he heard the front door of the suite open. He was not about to take his eyes off of Leon and Jay, so without turning around he called out ‘What’s going on with Jafar? Is everything ok?’

The reply came back with a smile. ‘Yeah, Jafar is fine. He’s taking a nap.’

Not recognising the voice, he instinctively turned around to see who it was however by the time he could react to the woman standing in the doorway, two full metal jackets had already travelled three quarters the length of the room, at a speed of 340 meters per second. There was only enough time for Leon to blink before the guy was hit twice in the heart. His eyes closed and the two Sig Sauer’s hit the floor with a clatter, shortly followed by the muffled thud of his body. Jay looked down at the lifeless driver, lying in a heap on the floor before jerking himself up from the couch to check his clothes for any blood spatter that may have caught him.

‘Damn girl! Didn’t you see us sitting right behind the mother-fucker? You lucky I ain’t got anything on me!’

Na’talia pulled a face before saying ‘How about, thank you for saving my sorry life, Na’talia.’

‘Whatever… !’ Jay replied.

Removing a small transparent plaster from behind his left ear, Jay looked down at the tiny micro-chip stuck in the middle. It was one of the CIA’s latest creations
-
The ‘BT-411’. The plaster itself was less than a centimetre in size and the micro-chip
-
despite its minuscule dimensions; it had a dual frequency transmitter, with a reception of up to 30 miles.

Jay crumpled it up between his fingers, flicked it away and said ‘I thought these things were supposed to help you keep track of our movements?’

‘They are…’ Na’talia replied. ‘. . . I’m here aren’t I?’

Jay kissed his teeth. ‘You and your boy Carter are made for each other. If you were any later we may not have been here.’ He said.

‘Unlucky me.’ Na’talia replied.

Knowing their back and forth was not going to end for now Leon decided to cut into the conversation.

‘Hey Na’talia, do you have a fix on the bags?’

‘Yes. The last time I checked, it looked like they were all still on route.’

‘On route to where?’ Jay said out loud.

With a sigh, Na’talia pulled out a phone from her back pocket, touched the screen a few times and started to smile. The phones bright LED screen displayed a street map with seven pulsating red dots, all clustered together at the top right hand corner.

‘Please tell me they’re not far from here?’ enquired Leon.

‘No. Not that far.’ replied Na’talia. ‘But we really need to get out of here NOW, before the hotel staff or someone else finds the bodies.’

‘The
bodies
!’ Jay repeated.

‘Yeah, bodies.’ replied Na’talia factually. ‘. . . The first well-dressed guy in the elevator. Then the one I met in the corridor outside and now this guy.’

Jay smiled. He would never admit it but he was actually starting to like Na’talia. Clapping his hands together Leon said, ‘Well, we’re with you, so let’s get out of here.’

Despite the urgency, it still took them over ten minutes to exit the building. Seven minutes to collect the two dead bodies and dump them back into the penthouse and another five minutes for them to get outside and for Na’talia to relay her story of how she saved their lives.

Leon and Jay followed Na’talia to a Black GMC Yukon, parked in the reserved section behind the same white Range Rover they arrived in. Na’talia got into the driver’s seat, Leon took the front passenger and Jay sat in the back. Pulling away from the curb Na’talia placed her phone into the hands-free holster on the dash and tapped the screen twice to bring up the map with the flashing lights. She was about to ask Leon a question but Jay cut in with ‘I do like your style girl. Your little rescue mission worked out. But I do have a question though. How did we just manage to walk out of a hotel with three dead guys and not have to deal with any hotel security personnel or neutralize any alarm system?’

‘Easy.’ Na’talia replied.

Reaching into the inside pocket of her grey jacket, she pulled out a small black box
–
about the width and length of a standard car alarm and gently threw it over her shoulder into Jay’s lap.

‘What is it?’ enquired Leon.

‘A high frequency signal blocker.’ Jay interrupted. ‘. . . I’ve seen them before.’

‘Not like that one…’ Na’talia said proudly. ‘. . . That in your hand was specifically designed to alter the picture signal of any monitor, TV, or CCTV within a 20 meter radius.’ she paused only long enough to overtake the buss in front of them, then said ‘The best thing is, unlike most blockers it doesn’t distort the picture but sends a freeze frame of the last image displayed. So in most cases, by the time security realise there is a problem the job’s been done.’

‘Cool.’ replied Jay with a smile.

Na’talia looked down at the flashing dots on her phone and noticed the seven pulsating spheres were still in the same location.

‘If I’m right, they shouldn’t be far.’ She said. ‘. . . It looks like they’re over near Central Park, about twelve blocks away.’

Na’talia took the next right at the traffic lights and headed north towards the given location. As they got close to Central Park Leon noticed a few of the red dots start to move. One by one the bags of money were being transferred to another location very close by.

‘They’re changing vehicles.’ Leon said out loud.

‘How do you know?’ asked Jay from the back seat.

Leon did not reply, just kept watching the movement of the red dots on the phone’s screen.

Na’talia finally pulled up on Central Park West and looked over at her phone on the dash. The map showed they were very close to two of the bags however the other five were all packed together, slowly moving away in the opposite direction. Pointing ahead of them Jay said, ‘Isn’t that the other white Range Rover from earlier?’

Leon looked up and saw the unmistakable white SUV, with 22inch rims and Limo tinted windows parked on the other side of the traffic lights. Its detailed paint job shun in the early midday sun, looking very out of place sitting in front of the Ethical Culture building.

Jay laughed. ‘I guess they didn’t check OUR bags and just through them into the back of the truck.’

‘It looks that way.’ replied Leon with a smirk.

‘So what’s up with the cash?’ asked Jay.

Na’talia responded to Jay’s query by tapping once on the phones screen which instantly brought up a magnified map, showing the five other flashing dots moving at a steady speed down 5
th
Avenue on the adjacent side of the park.

‘Shit, we missed them by seconds.’ Na’talia retorted.

‘So what we going to do?’ Jay asked.

Leon started to tap his fingers on the dash in front of him.

‘Well?’ Jay said impatiently.

Removing the phone from the hands-free case on the centre console, Na’talia swiped her thumb across the screen revealing a number pad. After dialling several digits she handed the phone over to Leon and said, ‘I think it’s time you speak to him.’

Leon knew exactly who she was talking about.

He tentatively took the phone from her grasp and looked down at the screen.

CHAPTER 16
 

P
utting the phone to his ear he heard it ring three times before a heavier, deeper version of his own voice came through the ear piece.

‘Hello, Na’talia.’

Leon’s mouth remained closed. He could not understand why, but for a split second he was unable to put into action the intentions of his brain.

His father’s voice came down the phone again. ‘Na’talia! Is that you?’